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Introducing the Eco30 build


cruizin01
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Hope everyone's weekend was excellent.

 

A handful of updates for this week.

 

I continued work on the interior. It needs a few new items that I havent purchased yet but I cleaned up what I had and made the best of it. Of course I dont take enough pictures but Ill maybe add some more soon.

 

I removed the old purple window tint from the back glass and 1/4 windows. The black rear seat and side panels were installed. I pulled the old beige door panels off and put new clips on the black panels I got from my friend in Cleveland. I installed the new to me anthracite carpet. The console I cleaned up the best I could. I installed a new ebrake boot. I ordered a new shift boot but decided to clean up and reuse the original one. I cleaned the seats up and reinstalled them. I really like these seats and if I keep the car I think Ill buy new leathers for them.

 

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The sunroof had been slightly open since I bought the car so I assumed it was jammed/broken. The manual crank was missing and the mounting plate was cracked. I found a chinabay replacement and went about installing it. Surprisingly everything works. Just have to be gentle and help the wind deflector a bit when you close everything up.

 

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I installed the new 4 wheel pads and rotors from Rock Auto. $90 shipped after tax for 4 rotors and 2 sets of pads.. :fuckyeah:

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While installing those I installed 2 new fender liners to keep rocks/etc out of the fenders.

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I took the car out for the first time on the road last weekend and it immediately got hot. Coolant temps over 210* in a few minutes so I brought it back in. Seemed like the tstat wasn't opening again. The radiator and lower hose would be cooled but the coolant temps would be 230*. I went about replacing the Tstat with an ACDelco unit. I did find some nice peppercorns that found their way inside an open hose from its time sitting in dudes barn before I got it.

 

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Unfortunately that didn't fix the issue and it still got hot. I left the system sit open overnight when the upper vent hose disconnected. In the morning I raised the coolant tank high up over the engine and drained some coolant out the vent and let it warm up again. Fixed! I dunno what I did but it must have got all the air out.

 

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Now my only issue is the cooling fan. It keeps blowing the mini 30 fuse in the fuse box. But if I pull leads from where the fuse is installed and put a normal 30 amp fuse on the leads the fan runs fine and doesn't flow the fuse. Thats probably confusing. Anyhow Im still working on that.

 

Other than that I think the car is about ready for a Dyno tune. It drives pretty good. No major issues. The brakes are still uhhh aren't great? I think the pads still need bed in. The manual brakes take a little getting used to. It drives pretty good other than that. Those springs I installed are pretty soft so it rides great. I can't do much with it as the car bucks when you get into boost so the tune but be in some sort of velet mode. I schedule a tune with Bob Morrison next week.

 

Yesterday I decided to mess around with the paint and see how it would react to some rubbing. Ive never used a rotary buffer before so I figured this would be a good candidate to start with. I used a wool pad and some Megs 205 and it cut that oxidation with the quickness. Super impressed. It does dry up quick and leave some holograms but a quick pass with my random orbital and some more 205 and they're gone. I cant wait to do the rest of the car. Its gonna be a pretty solid 5-10 footer and NOT pink!

 

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nice that older paint like this is so quick to clean up.

 

looking forward to seeing what it does on the dyno

 

No doubt. Ive never had anything old/older like this. Its a nice change of pace to not worry about how perfect it is. I did the drivers rear quarter, door and front fender last night. It looks like a whole different car. Still gonna be a 10 ft'r but Im perfectly happy with that.

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Been messing with getting a working tachometer in the car. There are some commercially tach adapters but they were $100. I found this little diy unit on ebay for $40. You basically just tap into a coil signal wire, then power and ground and output to the tach. There are a bunch of little dip switches depending on your engine and ignition system. Works great.

 

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Spent far too many hours over the past week doing an amateur paint correction on the car. As I posted previously I started with a heavy cut using wool pad, Meg 105 and a rotory buffer. I then stepped down to a random orbital and some Megs 205. Several areas needed several passes. There was some white overspray that required some light wet sanding. The roof is pretty bad and I decided to error on the side of caution and leave a lot of the scratches as to not cut the paint too thin. Several of the panels have clear coat chipping so I just blended them as welo as I could. You dont notice until you walk right up on it. I applied a coat of Menzerna sealant to protect the paint the best I could. I might apply more or something different. It was just what I had laying around. I still want to refinish the black trim and recoat the lower black areas as they need attention but overall I'm pretty satisfied with the results.

 

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Afternoon peoples,

 

Had the car up at ON3 for a couple days this week to have Bob work out the tune on it. I was having some high idle issues with it so he dug into that and the short of it is Ive got a bad throttle body. It worked fine except it wouldn't come all the way back to zero. The minimum tps was around 10%. I have a new one that Im hoping to install tonight, that should solve those issues. I dont think I'll have to have him retune the car.

 

I told him to keep it mild for now because the stock clutches on these cars dont hold a lot of power. And I wanted to see how it drove with nearly stock boost.

 

It made about 260whp on the mustang dyno and 270tq. With way too tall gearing the car still moves about pretty well. I definitely need to find a shorter rear diff. It currently has a 2.93 geat and if I take into account the stock solstice tire size the correct gear would be around 3.42. So at some point id like to find another rear end. The 5th gear isnt usable until your over 70mph.

 

Im pretty happy with the car so far though. The manual steering gets a little old, I may look into trying to find a place to mount the ecotech pump and possibly making lines to attach to the z3 rack.

 

Anyway I'll shut up. Ill update after the throttle repair and to any other fixes.

 

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Got any videos?

 

You sound like ALL of my friends.

 

I dont. I just dropped the car off and let him do his thing.

 

Ill try and get some in the coming weeks of me out and about a bit.

 

Thrash me now for my lack of media content! :bangbang:

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How about an electric steering conversion? See people in the classic cars using things out a Toyotas all the time. Might be worth looking into.

 

Yeah I may look into that.

 

I dug around a little yesterday and think I can use a Regal mounting bracket that holds the alternator and regal ps pump. Chase Bays has a e30 LS swap hoses and fluid can that I think would work on my setup. The existing Z3 rack should work as well. About $600-700 in parts though.

 

The car is back at the tuner this week. I installed a new throttle body and "correct" pedal. Neither one made any difference in the idle rpm especially on cold start. The tuner says he's somewhat limited due to the tables available in HP tuners. It sounds like these torque based management systems can be a pain. I doubled checked all my hardware, I pressure tested the system to 15psi and smoke tested everything. So he's gonna go back through it and try and get creative with it I guess.

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How about an electric steering conversion? See people in the classic cars using things out a Toyotas all the time. Might be worth looking into.

 

Can those systems work outside of the car they were designed to go in by some miracle or do they require some box that spoofs the CAN signals they expect to receive?

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I looked into the Toyota Prius electric steering conversion for dad's '57 vette. here is the information and link I have lying around:

 

https://www.therangerstation.com/tech/toyota-electric-power-steering-eps-conversion/

 

 

Only (3) wire connections; Ignition On, Power, and Ground to the Steering ECU. It's stand alone (Fail Safe) and will work even when the car is off as long as the ignition power is on.

 

list of cars that are known to have fail-safe electric steering.

2004-2009 Toyota Prius

2009-2013 Toyota Corolla

2006-2011 Toyota Yaris – (With ABS)

2007-2009 Nissan Versa

2009-2012 Nissan Cube

2012-2014 Kia Soul

 

Basically it sits behind the dash or at the steering box (where ever the steering column connects to it's first joint) and turns the shaft with the electric motor.

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That's a pretty novel fix and pleasant accident that they work well enough even when in fail-safe that it's useable every-day. Then again maybe almost anything is better than a full manual rack or 50-60 year old hydraulic power steering. :lol:

 

It feels like there is a market here for either these companies or an aftermarket company to sell a tunable solution and kits for the shaft connections. Maybe it would be easy enough to put some basic info in to get a 'base' tune e.g. some basic vehicle or suspension geometry and vehicle weight.

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I dug around and looked at a few of the options on those electric setups. I think they are all just a little too bulky for this car. I think Ill stick with a tried and true hydraulic system. Should require way less work if I can get all the correct parts.
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